Word: stanwycks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recent Oscar-winning weepies are descendants of the domestic melodramas of the '30s and '40s, with Barbara Stanwyck or Greta Garbo cast as a strong-willed woman censured by a straitlaced society. In the past 20 years, when women have achieved a measure of equality (except at the box office), the hero-victim has tended to be male, and the affliction has been mental, as in Rain Man, Forrest Gump and A Beautiful Mind. They're the movie equivalent of the orphan puppy that no one will adopt--except you, dear sensitive viewer...
...those comedies (all but The Miracle of Morgan's Creek) are amassed here as a reminder of how fast, reckless and smart movies can be. Sturges' social satire fizzes in The Great McGinty and Hail the Conquering Hero. But the pearl is The Lady Eve, with con artiste Barbara Stanwyck seducing naive Henry Fonda on the high seas and, just for fun, doing it again as a different woman on land...
...tough broads on the make or on the skids. Three of the best are collected here. Mae Clarke plays a world-weary prostitute in Waterloo Bridge. Jean Harlow is an unrepentant gold digger, leaving broken hearts and two corpses in her wake, in Red Headed Woman. And the great Stanwyck, as sharp as a slap, sleeps her way to the top in the all-time sleazerrific Baby Face, now available in the original version, which was too hot for the censors...
...great actresses who never won an Oscar, Barbara Stanwyck had an intelligence and fire that lasered through all her roles. She's best as a predator on the make but showed her range in this 1937 sudser about a back-street woman who embarrasses her daughter (Anne Shirley) as the girl rises in society.We won't describe the ending, except to say that if Stanwyck doesn't make you cry, we would be tempted to refund your money--to help pay for a heart transplant...
...large. She hosted a 13-week series, The Gallery of Madame Liu Tsong (her Chinese name), for the Dumont network in 1951, and in 1957 hosted an ABC evening of film clips from the 30s trip to China, called Bold Journey. She did guest spots on The Barbara Stanwyck Show and Adventures in Paradise. In 1956 she got a long-deferred chance to play a role she lost out on in Hollywood: as the Asian blackmailer in Somerset Maugham's The Letter. The director of the TV show was William Wyler, the man who had said no when he made...